Intro to digital marketing - Chapter 9: Social media strategy

The five steps for creating a social media plan

1. Determine the objective

2. Choose the social media platform(s)

3. Plan the content

4. Distribute and promote content

5. Measure success

What should a company do if an objective isn’t immediately obvious?

Start with efforts that are easily accomplished/easy to measure

How can analysis paralysis be avoided?

Managers should develop a set of key performance indicators

Measuring reach

Tracking the total number of

• Likes, subscribers, and followers

• Follower growth

• Impressions/views

Measuring engagement

Tracking the total number of

• Pins/re-pins

• Likes/comments

• Engagement rate

• Purchase frequency/likelihood

Social listening measures

• Volume (and changes in it)

• Sentiment (and changes in it)

• Topic

Needs listening software like Crimson Hexagon or Sprout Social

What should be considered when choosing social media platforms?

1. The population characteristics 

2. The nature of company-person interactions on the platforms

Population characteristics

The size of the active user population and population density

e.g. If a firm wants to target younger users, they’d choose Instagram; a firm wanting to do business in Mexico will find more users on WhatsApp

Nature of social media interactions

Using different social media platforms to achieve certain objectives with social media

Owned media

Company-controlled properties that have incentives based on value propositions to get customers to follow a social media page, preferably after the customer has made a purchase or other meaningful interaction with the company, as well as keeping them engaged (e.g. via shares or reshares)

e.g. Website and email traffic

Earned media

Publicity gained from unpaid promotional efforts, such as news articles, or content shared by users; it can be very beneficial or very negative

e.g. Seo, direct traffic, search engine

Paid media

When a company pays for the distribution of its advertising content, thus allowing content to be distributed only to users who are good targets

e.g. Social media, display, and affiliate marketing.

Influencer marketing

When a firm pays a social media influencer of any size to create one or more posts about the firm’s offerings, as long as said influencer fits the firm’s offerings in a believable

What do people mean when they talk about “doing social media”

1. The creation of posts/content

2. Paid advertising on social media

3. Reputation management 

All these activities accomplish the company’s goal of creating and keeping a customer

Posting to create first-time customers

It is somewhat ineffective, as most social media platforms have limits on posts from businesses

Posting to increase customer loyalty

It is highly effective as most followers are already customers, and thus any subsequent posts build loyalty

Posting for SEO value

Is ideal for companies that depend on local search results and are doing everything they can to optimize their SEO 

Social media monitoring 

Conducting reputation management by responding to comments (both positive and negative)

What’s socials listening

Multiple techniques for extracting information from social media conversations

Socials listening methods

1. Scraping all public mentions of a company from social media platforms

2. Coding said mentions as private positive, negative, or neutral

3. Summarizing the average sentiment about a company

The drawbacks of social listening

1. It can be hard to find company-relevant mentions on social media

2. It may be unrealistic to manually code every mention due to the volume

3. The validity of the summarized score’s usefulness is questionable

Original content

Content original to the company that isn’t limited by outside entities and has complete control

User generated content

Content created by users after they’ve been invited or encouraged to do so by the company; can create more content for the company to use as well as strengthen the bond it has with its users

Co-created content

A collab between multiple content creators and can be beneficial for both brands as they get exposure to each other’s followers

Curated content

Posts created by another entity entirely

Forms of media

Live video, edited video, GIFs, images, plain text

Creating a social media style guide

• Have an appropriate tone

• Be mindful of legal rules and regulations

• Respond appropriately to customers

• Have appropriate formatting

Utilitarian value

Value attached to an ad or promotion that allows the customer to get something they want; are usually product focused

e.g. Product tips, recipe suggestions, deals, training, etc

Entertainment value

People who use social media for amusement

e.g. Humour, insider knowledge, news from a company rep, etc

Community value

People who use social media to connect with friends or brands

Scheduling

Considering the best time to post to maximize the reach and the likelihood the post will show up, as well as scheduling posts accordingly

Scheduling (con’t)

Scheduling software like Hootsuite and SproutSocial can be used too